Highway to the Skies
by superimpossedmadness
Summary: She feels like something is about to happen. It reminds Rey of that time when that very same feeling warned her of other scavengers in her turf. It certainly saved her from a dangerous scuffle with whomever they were - a human girl of eight standard years was hardly intimidating, after all. This feels familiar but it didn't feel like whatever it was, was a threat.


**A/N : The rough draft of this particular fic has been saved in my Notes for over a year. It wasn't until recently that I got the motivation to work on it again, so here we are. This hasn't been beta'd, so any mistakes or grammatical errors are mine. This is mostly just an indulgent little thing since Rey and Anakin are my favourite characters, so it won't be all too plot-heavy.**

 **Disclaimer : I do not own Star Wars, it belongs to LucasFilm Ltd. and Disney.**

* * *

It happens in the hazy nothingness between sleep and wakefulness.

When Rey groggily opens her eyes, it's to the endless sight of the sky and the few smattering of clouds. She slowly pushes herself to sit, disoriented and confused. The weight of her palms sink into the sand below and it takes a few good minutes for her to coordinate her stiff limbs to help herself to stand on her own two feet. She stumbles, absently dusting the sand off her clothes, but even after shaking out her worn tunic and patting her arms, she can still feel the grit and grime of sand sticking to her body. With a resigned sigh, she drops her hands and spins around in place, looking over the horizon to try and see past the blinding gleam of the sun out into the distance, holding a hand above her brows in an effort to see better.

She tries to recall how she got here, out in the open, but she's met with a blank every time she stops to ponder. She should panic, knows this deep down - that unfailing urge to survive had always helped her before - but everything around her feels muted, like her senses were muffled with cotton. Almost as if she were on autopilot, Rey descends the sand dune mechanically, slip-sliding down the uneven surface, the soles of her boots gliding right over the sand.

Once she makes it back down to the edge of the dune, she feels a strange pull directing her east. She frowns, the first stirrings of doubt surfacing, but wordlessly, she turns in that direction and takes the first step. Then another, then another. Soon she's crossing the distance, a small figure of warm beige and dark browns in the sea of golden sand.

Rey is only vaguely aware of the sun overhead but, strangely enough, she can't feel its biting sting as she treks across the endless sea of sand. It certainly looks like Jakku but then again, she's never been anywhere else to really know better. All she sees are sandy dunes and the endless sky - it's enough of a familiarity to the backwater planet she calls home that she doesn't stop to question it.

The air feels heavy with static, like the few breath-stopping moments before a particularly nasty sandstorm. Rey squints, looking ahead for any heavy storm clouds but the skies remain persistently clear. Some of the earlier numbness she had felt had begun to wear off and she nearly falters, her thoughts - once hazy and unclear - begin buzzing in the back of her mind. She feels like something is about to happen, a persistent thought that weighs heavily in her mind. It reminds Rey of that time when that very same feeling warned her of other scavengers in her turf. It certainly saved her from a dangerous scuffle with whomever they were - a human girl of eight standard years was hardly intimidating, after all. This feels familiar but it didn't feel like whatever it was, was a threat.

She takes in a deep breath, clenching her fists in an effort to draw in strength. She continues on her way, following the tug in her gut.

* * *

It feels like it's been forever since Rey had started her aimless trek across the desert, but even then her body feels weightless. She doesn't feel thirst seizing her throat, doesn't feel the all-too-familiar ache of hunger. It's strange, like Rey isn't completely _there_.

In the distance she sees a tall rock structure jutting out from the sand, casting a long, thin shadow in its wake. Rey starts, after what has felt like hours of being surrounded by nothing but sand, it is the first actual thing she's seen in this empty flatland. Its surface is flat and even, years of being exposed to the heat and the wind had smoothed out any jagged lines. Whatever it was that had pulled her here seems the strongest in that direction, so she makes her way over, ever mindful of the sloping sands.

She's a few steps away from the rock when she notices a tiny silhouette huddling underneath the shade. The air around her sings and vibrates with something so close to tangible that finally, like the tight, unrelenting pressure of a compressed balloon, the haze fogging Rey's mind pops and dissipates, leaving her feeling more than a little confused. Her senses, once dulled, are suddenly hyper-focused and sharp. It narrows down to the figure, coaxing her to come closer.

The figure, it seems, takes notice of her as well since it steps out of the shadows as soon as Rey crests the dune. Under the ever-present light of the sun, Rey sees that the figure is another human, a boy.

Rey's eyes widen before narrowing in suspicion. She takes a hasty step back from the mysterious boy, putting as much distance between them as she could. She peers at him cautiously, knees bent as if she were getting ready to run at the slightest suspicious movement.

The boy blinks at her, clearly just as taken aback by her presence as she is with his. He's short, barely taller than her, and his cheeks are still round with baby fat, set with a smattering of freckles. He couldn't have been much older than her but his eyes hold a solemn intelligence. He is wearing a loose woollen tunic, the ends of the fabric cinched together at the waist with a brown belt. It looks a little frayed and worn, not too unlike her own clothes, and his hair is sun-bleached, pale and almost ephemeral under the sun. She's never seen him before but she knows a desert dweller when she sees one. She idly wonders if he could be from one of the few settlements scattered across Jakku. She's been around the Graveyard of Giants enough times to recognise other scavengers, and yet his face is still unfamiliar, so it is the only conclusion she could come up with.

She is so deep in her thoughts that she nearly startles out of her skin when the boy's voice shatters the silence. He had covered the distance between them while she was distracted. _Stupid, stupid_ , Rey mentally berates herself, muscles tensing in preparation of a fight.

Unexpectedly, the boy simply smiles at her.

"Hi there!" He holds out a hand to Rey, the underside of his nails stained with grease and machine oil. She furrows her brows in confusion, staring at his outstretched hand before lifting her gaze to meet his face. She certainly wasn't expecting this.

All the while, his expression remains open, welcoming. Rey hesitates briefly before she slips her hand into his. The moment their palms touch, Rey feels a jolt race up and down her arm. It startles her enough that she almost lets go of his hand altogether but surprisingly, the boy holds on. His palm is rough with callouses, tanned and no bigger than hers. Eventually, she squeezes his hand lightly, feeling a little bashful and unsure.

"Um, hi. I'm Rey," she says quietly, moving their joined hands in a quick, perfunctory hand shake. She doesn't have a lot of opportunities to interact with other children her age, so she's afraid her movements are a little stiff and stilted, unpracticed as she is with these gestures and niceties.

Despite her initial worry, the boy positively beams. The air around them suddenly feels lighter, even a little brighter somehow, humming with some sort of pulsing energy Rey can't quite place. She can't explain how she's so sure of it but she just knows it has something to do with the boy. Briefly, she finds herself returning that smile before she catches herself. If Anakin is offended, he doesn't say anything.

"Well, I'm Anakin, and it's nice to meet you, Rey!" His accent, slurring through the tones of Basic, is thick, clip and precise. With a shy smile of his own, he softly adds, "But you can call me Ani."

Rey tightens her grip around his hand once more in acknowledgment before she lets go and takes a small step back, shuffling her feet nervously.

Jakku is not the best place to make friends, at least those you'd trust enough not to stab you in the back as soon as the opportunity arose. Still, she looks at this boy - this Anakin - and can't help but wonder about the possibility. Anakin catches her gaze and flashes her a guileless grin, catching Rey off-guard. She hastily shifts her gaze to her care-worn boots, shifting the sand around with the arch of her foot.

She's never really met anyone so, well, openly friendly before. Save for the few scavengers that she'd shared a couple of words with, others knew to steer clear from her. Unkar Plutt had probably had a hand in this, and Rey did not know whether she felt gratitude or anger at this - it wasn't a secret that because of Jakku's limited resources, scavenging seemed like the only way to way to live on Jakku for a lot of its denizens.

For many, it was literally a choice of life or death. Scavengers were fierce and possessive of their scraps, and it often led to more than one fight when scavengers found something of value in the sea of otherwise useless junk. Rey didn't have much in the way of protection on her own but Unkar Plutt saw her as an investment because she was good at what she did and even the shrewd Crolute couldn't deny this, so he declared her untouchable. Everyone knew to leave her be for fear of retaliation from Unkar Plutt and his goons.

Still, a tiny part of her couldn't deny that it made her feel lonely at times, as isolated as she already was.

The fact that Anakin barely knows anything about her and still seems willing to extend a hand of friendship makes her wary initially but a small, almost desperate part of her wants to trust this boy. Wants to believe that somehow, some way, there are others still capable of being good just for the sake of being good. A gut instinct, something buried deep down, pulses and flares. _Yes_ , it says, _trust_.

Inch by inch, the tension leaves Rey's body, and she finds herself unwinding from her defensive slouch. _This_ Anakin takes note of because he seems to mirror her posture, standing a little straighter.

"Y'know, I don't really know where I am," Anakin confesses out of the blue, reaching up to scratch the back of his head.

Rey cocks her head. "Are you lost?" She asks, still a little unsure of how to act around him.

"I guess I am," Anakin hums, looking rather untroubled despite the weight of his words. "I haven't really been this far away from The Quarters before. Not unless you count trips to Mos Espa Grand Arena, of course."

Rey likes to think that she's very familiar with Jakku–it certainly helps to know which places to go to and which ones to avoid. So when Anakin mentions _Mos Espa Grand Arena_ , it's understandable that she's a little confused. "I've never heard of it," she says, but it comes out a little sharper than she had intended.

Anakin gawks, his face almost comical in its shock. Rey bites back the urge to laugh, but that only seems to set Anakin off because he bounces on his toes, arms swinging with the movement. "You haven't heard of Mos Espa Grand Arena? Of the Boonta Eve Classic? Even the colonies from the Western Dune Sea come to watch it. It's only the biggest Podracing event _ever_."

None of the words Anakin had just uttered make any sense to Rey. She's heard of Podracing, sure enough. The off-worlders who occasionally stop by Niima Outpost like to talk, and from them she's heard bits and pieces about planets several star systems far, far away. It isn't exactly a legal sport, not since it had been outlawed during the height of the Empire's reign, but it _had_ sounded exciting nonetheless.

But Rey knows with utmost certainty that no such thing exists on Jakku. The closest thing she could think of would be the Wheel Races, but those were all the way in Cratertown and certainly not as dangerous as Podracing. So Rey shakes her head, furrowing her brows in askance. "We don't have Podracing, not _here_."

Anakin shakes his head in apparent denial. "That can't be right. We had one just last year."

" _Well_ ," Rey persists, stretching out the word in the all-knowing way that only children can manage, "It is right, and I'm not sure I've heard of anything like that happening here." She makes a point of crossing her arms as if to say, _so there_.

Anakin scrunches up his nose, looking distressed for the first time since Rey had met him. "I think I'd remember, I was part of the race!"

Rey's eyes widen in disbelief, and her arms drop back down to her sides. "You're lying," she accuses. She vaguely recalls a Chagrian freighter pilot saying that no human had ever participated in Podraces, though there had been some odd rumors or two. _Nothing founded in truth though_ , he had told her with a conspiratorial wink. "Don'thol Rixo said-"

"I'm _not_ lying!" Anakin interjects, and suddenly the air around them coils and shivers, laden with something restless. Rey flinches, like Anakin had struck a physical blow.

Almost immediately, Anakin's expression crumples and he looks apologetic for his outburst. In a softer, more subdued tone, he says, "'M not lying, I swear. I really did race in the Boonta Eve Classic, though mom nearly lost her head when I first told her about joining. And Watto wasn't all too happy when I crashed his Pod, either. Said I had to fix it up it myself since it was in such a sorry state, like he's ever done any of the repairs himself anyways."

Anakin sniffs at the memory, rubbing his nose almost absently, where a persistent oil stain darkened his tanned skin. The action only seems to spread the stain until it had crept up to the bridge of his nose. He then goes on to tell her about the race, eyes alight with excitement.

Rey blinks, not quite sure how to respond. It all sounds so fantastical. This boy, barely older than her, piloting a Pod and pulling off what had to be death-defying stunts if what Don'thol Rixo had said about Podracing was to be believed. Not to mention, some things just weren't adding up. Anakin kept mentioning places she's never heard of before. _Western Dune Sea_? _The Quarters_? Was he actually an off-worlder? He's dressed like a desert dweller, though. If Rey had to guess, she would have thought that Anakin had come from Tuanul, maybe one of the moisture farms a little ways from Blowback Town, or the mining communities further north. But she had been so sure he was a local…

Firming her resolve, Rey decides to plunge on ahead and ask, "I don't think I've asked...but where are you from, anyways?"

Anakin pauses mid-sentence, peering at her strangely. "The Quarters. I said so before, remember?"

"Where's that? I've never heard of it." Rey's expression twists as she stops to really, _really_ think about it.

Anakin is still staring at her like he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "It's in Mos Espa, near Hadada market."

There it is again, _Mos Espa_. "There's no town by that name though," Rey says with a slow shake of her head. She can actually count the number of major settlements on Jakku on one hand, and Mos Espa definitely is not one of them.

"Everyone on Tatooine knows Mos Espa, what rock have you been living under?" Anakin looks incredulous, losing some of his earlier excitement as disbelief settles in its place.

Rey spends a second to feel indignant at the insult before the rest of Anakin's words sink in. _Wait, what_? Her brows arch, and her lips part. "Tatooine?"

"Where else would we be?"

Rey's response is immediate, and more than a little forceful since she's still a little stung from his earlier remark. "Jakku."

"Oh." That stops Anakin short, and he looks off to the side thoughtfully. He doesn't react like Rey thought he would - in a frenzied panic or, worse still, another flare of anger. Rather, he seems to take it in stride. For one, he seems more calm about it than Rey is. "That makes sense, I guess," Anakin mutters, like this has happened to him before. What a strange boy.

When Rey doesn't say anything else, Anakin hesitantly adds, "I wouldn't have gotten this far on my own, anyways. Not without Watto triggering the-"

Abruptly, Anakin stops, looking away from Rey but not before she is able to see how his expression shutters off.

Rey swears she can sense an aura of unease and hesitance settle over them like a physical weight. In an effort to draw Anakin from his sudden bout of silence, she decides to change the topic. "You don't seem all that surprised," she says, leaning a little ways forward until she can make out the side of his face.

Anakin peers at her from the corner of his eye, and the silence stretches on for a while longer. Rey fidgets, not used to being scrutinised so. With a gutsy sigh, he deflates, his shoulders sagging with the movement. "I've had dreams like this before," he admits, turning to face her again, face puckered up in such a way that brought attention to the freckles on the bridge of his nose. "I'm usually older though," he adds as an afterthought.

Now it's Rey's turn to gawk. Of all the things Anakin could have said, this is probably the last thing Rey expected. He's not lying though. Somehow, in some way, she knows this with utmost certainty.

Distantly, she remembers her own dreams of faraway planets filled with as much water as there was sand on Jakku, of the distant sound of cresting waves and the shrill cries of winged creatures circling overhead.

Everything else already feels topsy-turvy - nothing has really made sense up until now, from Anakin and his tall tales of Podracing, to this barren wasteland that feels too tranquil, too _still_ to be real, to be anything like how Jakku actually is in the waking world.

"This, this is normal for you then?" Rey asks, rather surprised at herself for her own mild tone. It's too easy to believe this strange boy, she finds despite her usual cynicism, to take his word for what it is. He doesn't seem all that capable of deception, and Rey finds herself drawn to that raw honesty, so rare in the harsh deserts of Jakku where lying is all but second nature for most of its inhabitants.

"Uh-huh," Anakin chirps with a nod, some of that mischievous twinkle back in his eyes. "Sometimes I'm flying off to planets I've only ever heard of, and it's so _wizard_!" With that exclamation, Anakin throws his arms out in exhilaration and for a moment, it seems like Anakin himself is glowing with the sheer force of his joy. Rey feels a resonating spark of pure elation at the sight, almost as if Anakin's happiness is contagious. It settles in her bones - the warmth, fever-bright and welcoming.

"I have dreams like that, too," Rey intones quietly, still reeling from the whispers of emotions she feels but knows aren't hers. "It feels so real that sometimes I think it is."

Anakin hums, rocking back and forth on his heels. "What do you dream about, Rey?"

Rey looks to her feet, staring at the uneven stitching holding the fabric of her boots together. "I'm not too sure where it is, or if it's even real, but there's a planet somewhere out there, and it's covered in so much water. I feel like I'm flying over it, you know? I'm not on a ship or a cruiser, though. I'm just, well, floating. It's...nice."

Rey peeks up at Anakin, trying to gauge his reaction to her words. It's silly, she knows, to be worried about revealing that tidbit of information when Anakin has just admitted the same thing. She didn't have to worry, it would seem, since Anakin merely offers her another one of his bright smiles.

"When I grow up, I wanna be a spacer. I wanna fly to all the planets out there, just to see what they're like," Anakin sighs, a wistful little thing, looking far more world-weary than a child ought to be. "I'll even take my mom. I think she'll like that. Someday, it _will_ be real, I just know it."

Rey knows there's more to it than that but she knows better than to pry. Instead, she offers him a supportive smile, fledgling as it is.

Anakin looks off to the side, as if lost in thought. After a moment, he says, "Something's gonna happen soon, I can feel it. Mom says I'm Moons-blessed, y'know. I can tell when something's gonna happen before it does, and it's a little weird. It's helped with Podracing, though." Here, Anakin smiles, and Rey snorts inelegantly because _of course_. It seems like Anakin is single-minded like that.

Rey cocks her head thoughtfully, feeling a strange kinship with Anakin blossoming despite herself. It's with that feeling of goodwill that she decides to ask, "What are the places you dream of, Ani?"

Anakin lights up, like Rey couldn't have asked a better question at that moment. He goes on a long spiel about his dreams of faraway planets, and exploring star systems that couldn't possibly be real, his entire body moving with his gestures. Rey can't help but laugh at the strange spectacle of Anakin pantomiming how his starship narrowly escaped an Exogorth burrowed within an asteroid, the boy flushing with exertion as he throws his arms out wide.

This is probably the lightest Rey has felt in a long, long time.

* * *

Rey wakes up with a breathless gasp, the rusted ceiling of the gutted AT-AT coming into focus of her swimming vision. A dream, it was just a dream, Rey thinks absently, gingerly sitting up in her lumpy cot, her pilot doll falling from her limp grasp. In that short span of a moment, the memory of her dream fades until she can only recall brief, hazy snippets. She lifts a hand to pat absently at her face, only mildly shocked to see it come away damp with tears.

She doesn't know why she feels oddly bereft.


End file.
